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Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux
superboyac:
Well, I've managed to sidestep Linux over the years, but now it's time. I'm doing it...I'm going to start transitioning to Linux.
I'm tired of feeling guilty by trying to get my Windows system to do exactly the things I want. I've noticed most of the interesting developments have been stifled in recent years because of all the copyright issues. The Linux guys really are my crowd. All open, all free...it's what I believe in.
I don't know how long it will take, it took me a year to transition from XP to Win7, so I imagine this may take me a couple of years. But i don't want to pay money anymore to faceless companies. I want to be part of a community that helps each other out regardless of how much they get paid, and that's the Linux community. And I'll gladly give them my money before the other guys.
I've been pushing the limits of Windows for a while now. I keep running into obstacles, not because I'm pushing the technology, but because copyright concerns are preventing the technologies from developing. My ideas of what I want to do with my computer should NOT feel like I'm the first person to ask for something like this. I'm really not that clairvoyant. I've struggled with the cloud for a couple of years now, and there's no need for it. Let the masses deal with the proprietary stuff and all the headaches that come along with it. I want to be with the guys that are freely exploring their ideas.
Where's Zaine? Z...I'm joining the club, I'm going underground. I held off as long as I could.
MilesAhead:
The main alternative. Do it the hard way and learn how the stuff works under the covers: Slackware
Do it the easy way and boot to everything up and running: Mandriva One
Basically Mandriva is the descendant of Mandrake, which was before and better than Ubuntu, but only had buzz among developers. I tried Mandriva One 10 awhile back just to see if it still had it. If you have broadband, boot one CD. Set up your disk with Linux and swap partitions. Choose your packages, window manager and account passwords, reboot. It comes up to your account in the Window Manager with everything you chose installed. If what you picked in Package Manager isn't on the CD, it's downloaded right then. It uses APT same as Debian and Ubuntu, but the whole install and package manager setup is done better. It's the smoothest OS install I've ever used, aside from maybe the old days of one Dos Diskette. Also Mandrake was known for optimized performance. It installed Pentium kernel back in the day when most distros still put on a 386 kernel for fear of incompatibility. It was the distro for developers as the package manager had free programming languages by the dozen. Stuff you may not even know existed. In short, it kicks ass.
The Ubuntu guy must be a PR maven 'cause I don't see the reason for the buzz other than that Ubuntu uses APT package tool. Empty fame.
superboyac:
Yeah Miles...you're waaaay ahead of me here. I don't understand half the things you said, but I'm going to learn. I need to start learning the Linux lingo. If I understand correctly, you're saying Ubuntu is overrated and this mandriva is a good, easy install to introduce me to Linux. So I'll give it a shot.
hpearce:
You don't want pay money to faceless companies ... I expect most big companies are .... your options are very limited if you really believe that.
For me, I'm mored intereted in getting what I pay for than a pretty "politically correct" face company :D
MilesAhead:
Yeah Miles...you're waaaay ahead of me here. I don't understand half the things you said, but I'm going to learn. I need to start learning the Linux lingo. If I understand correctly, you're saying Ubuntu is overrated and this mandriva is a good, easy install to introduce me to Linux. So I'll give it a shot.
-superboyac (February 28, 2012, 04:27 PM)
--- End quote ---
Right. There was a saying "if you learn another distro, you learn that distro. If you learn Slackware, you learn Linux." I'm not a guru like some of the guys who helped me when I was struggling with Slackware. But it made you get down into the scripts that ran on startup. The installer got you to a command prompt with 6 virtual terminals. If you wanted X you had to copy the libraries on, configure all the settings, by hand. It's not as draconian as that anymore. But Slackware still prides itself on being close to the metal.
The most important thing though, once you are up and running I think you'll find Mandriva very usable. I tried Redhat for awhile, but the rpg package tool was a struggle. Not so much that rpg was bad, it's more that default directories weren't set up as in APT. APT just works much nicer. If you installed a program it didn't take you 5 more days to get it to work unless it was some really complicated network stuff like a Samba server or something. Also there has been a lot of homogenization since I was doing it. Now it's pretty much taken for granted the PC will have a PCI bus with some kind of Super VGA or later video etc.. Back when I was doing Slackware 3 sometimes it was a challenge just to get the mouse to work right.
Mandriva is a stable and well constructed distro. I think you'll be a bit ahead of the game if you start with it.
edit: btw in case there's any doubt.. the One CD is a freebie. Download burn and install. Things may have changed a bit since I was heavy into Linux in that back then most of the help was found on nntp newsgroups. They may have emigrated to web forums.. but maybe not. A search brings up this page which seems a good starting point:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Help
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